TENNIS 10SBALLS HAS ARRIVED IN MADRID FOR THE MUTUA MASTERS BY CRAIG CIGNARELLI AND TEAM

Written by: Staff on 2nd May 2016

TENNIS 10SBALLS HAS ARRIVED IN MADRID FOR THE MUTUA MASTERS BY CRAIG CIGNARELLI AND TEAM |

Photo by 10sBalls

The Mutua Madrid Tournament started this week and 10sballs.com has tasked me to provide daily reports. My assignment is vague, offering only the following directive: Tell us what’s going on over there. Not exactly Magellan, eh?

On day one, the draw has less stars than a night sky above Shanghai. Lopez beats Mayer. Kuznetsov gets the better of Troicki. At present writing, Istomin is doing battle with Gabasvhili. See, getting excited for these guys is like visiting Madrid’s ruins – it’s a bunch of stuff you’ve never heard of, you hope its interesting, but you might not be too upset if you don’t see it all.

And that’s really what I want this first story to be about. As a coach for over two decades, I’ve traveled the world to see tournaments on every continent. While the sport continues to expand, the commercial side of the game expands exponentially. Grand stadiums grow grander. Bigger sponsor booths shout capitalism from banner-covered tables and pop-up tents. Mom and Pop food outlets now defer to name brand companies and things like a seven Euro slice of pizza are suddenly acceptable.

On the grounds of the Mutua Madrid Tournament, uniformed children play Pádel while proud parents applaud their points. There is a long line of youngsters involved in the Torneo Virtual for soccer, tennis, and auto racing (these are video games where students can act like they are playing sports without actually playing sports). Some of these kids sport fierce faces and scream passionately when they win a battle. In other lines, skirted youth don virtual reality headsets to watch Spanish television and then sit gesturing blindly, in a scene which can only be compared to a Stevie Wonder video. All of the racquet companies are here, each with their own brand ambassador emblazoned on giant posters and placed at the front of their exhibition booth. Stan Wawrinka’s poster-head is bigger than his Yonex racquet and the two girls taking their picture with it appear to have had their heads shrunk. Amongst the other booths, Marca is hosting a fast-serve contest where at least two grown men have gone down to shoulder injuries and one young woman just slapped her boyfriend for coming up 2 km/h short of her fastest serve. He will probably be making dinner tonight.

Photo by 10sBalls

On court, the Umpire is seven wooden steps above the clay, in a white and red Ricoh-sponsored chair, and he’s staring out at a net covered in lighter-red Fly Emirates banners while Mary Kay ads light up beside the sideline marquis. Meanwhile, the players exit Mercedes vehicles in front of massive crowds who wave arms and hands like cruise ship departees and then drool and reach for their tennis idols with the sort of desperate stretch only children in candy stores can truly appreciate.

All of this commercialism provides revenue for the players, excitement for the fans, and opportunity for the sponsors. But, at what cost? The tickets are for the tennis and there are thousands of people here who’ve paid some pretty hefty Euro to acquire them. Right now, half of them are downstairs with a VR monitor strapped to their heads and wondering if there’s ever been a better way to escape reality. Meanwhile, Dolgopolov and Stevie Johnson are so entrenched in a third-set tiebreaker, the thousand people actually watching look like the See No, Hear No, Speak No evil monkeys.

The point here is there’s a lot of stuff that takes people’s eyes away from the sport. Understandably, the crowds are smaller with the big names still touring Madrid’s tapas’ bars before getting down to business, but there’s still some great tennis here. As a sport, we need to find the balance between extracurricular opportunities which attract fans and sponsorships, and the pure athletic curriculum which post its speed and intelligence as advertisements in their own right.

If we do, we’ll capture the excitement of all of those children sprinting to see Rafa warm-up on the practice court, all of those spectators who hover over the fence to catch an autograph, all of those dreamers who believe they too can hit a ball and hold a trophy like their champions. That’s what I’m here for.

Tomorrow, I’ll introduce Caja Magica, Madrid’s $392 million stadium with an architecture so unique, it defies description…almost….